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So sad...what was he thinking?
Toddler dies when her father lets boy drive his car
The victim's father sat in the passenger's seat while he let a 12-year-old move the car to make room for a child's party.
By JADE JACKSON LLOYD
Published May 23, 2004
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LARGO - Summer Wolfe reached up and touched her father's leg.
The 2-year-old girl, all blond hair and big blue eyes, had seen her daddy get into their money-green Taurus station wagon. He sat on the passenger's side, his door hanging open.
A 12-year-old boy, poised for his very first drive, perched behind the wheel.
Wherever they were going, Summer wanted to go, too.
As the car lurched into reverse, the boy grew scared and jumped out of the car. Before the man could react, he felt tiny fingers tap at his leg. He lunged for the gear shift, fearing the worst.
In the seconds it took for him to slam the car into park, the father of four's worst fears were realized: The open passenger-side door knocked his daughter down, and the front tire rolled over her small frame.
"It was too late," said Largo police Sgt. George Edmiston, in charge of traffic homicide, after the incident Saturday. "The child's arm and leg were still under the bumper area" when police arrived on the scene.
Largo police were dispatched to Longbranch Apartments, at 2175 62nd St. N, at 1:23 p.m. Saturday. At roughly 2:50 p.m., the child was pronounced dead from her injuries at Bayfront Medical Center.
Police say they will not bring charges against the juvenile driver, whose name they would not release. The boy, wearing a red shirt and gray shorts, sat in one of seven police cruisers on the scene and answered questions for more than two hours.
His family did not want to comment.
Hours after the accident, police were still deciding whether Kevin Wolfe, 30, would be charged. Edmiston said Wolfe could be charged with allowing an unauthorized operator to drive, a misdemeanor, or culpable negligence, a felony meaning an action that exposes another person to personal injury.
"Everybody is teary-eyed right now," said Marquis Washington, 30, a resident of the complex. "I don't even know the little girl, but it's just a sad thing. That could have been my little girl."
Wolfe just wanted to be a good neighbor, neighbors said.
When his next-door neighbor, Tiffany Gordon, told him she planned to throw a birthday party for her 8-year-old son, Wolfe volunteered to help in any way he could.
Mission No. 1: clear the cars from the small, circular parking lot just outside their apartments. The kids needed some space to play, they decided.
Darrington Miller, 13, was taking out the trash when he heard a woman scream. He ran over to the parking lot and witnessed something he's doomed to remember.
"I saw the the station wagon here pull back off the little girl," he said, pointing to the spot, taped off by police. "The man, I guess he was the little girl's father, got out and stood over the little girl. The little boy, . . . he jumped up and he ran." The boy saw a bicycle and rode it to his grandmother's apartment, Miller said.
Adults and children of this family-oriented complex converged quickly at the scene, witnesses said. Of nearly 700 residents there, nearly 150 are children, according to apartment manager Cindy LeBlanc. Clutches of bicycles lean against railings. Plastic stoves and small toys dot the landscape.
When they heard a little girl had been run over, some of the tenants rushed to see if she was one of their own.
It's in that spirit that they offered the grieving man and his daughter whatever help they could. A few even offered medical assistance.
In his panic, the father refused, one said.
"There were five of us standing there with medical training," said Pam Miller, a trained certified nursing assistant and licensed practitioner nurse. "He didn't want her touched. That's what makes me angry. We had to stand there and watch her die."
Summer Wolfe was airlifted to the hospital, her 29-year-old mother, Michelle, in tow. When the news came that she had died, Kevin Wolfe lost control, witnesses said.
"He punched the closet really hard," said Darrington Miller, who was standing at the apartment door at the time. "He went to the kitchen and swept all the knives and forks and plates and everything" to the floor.
Meanwhile, the girl's three older siblings attended the birthday party next door in apartment 508, oblivious still to the mix of death, anguish and change that had transpired in their lives that day. Largo police, victim advocates and detectives roamed the apartment complex.
As police questioned Kevin Wolfe and the boy, the Wolfe children sat watching a Shrek DVD in the company of other kids.
Gordon, 22, decided the party should go on despite her neighbors' tragedy.
"Just to keep the kids occupied and the stress down," she said. "I have their kids in my house. If I didn't have the kids, they'd all be sitting around watching this."
Gordon, who has lived in the complex for three years, described the Wolfes as great parents who "work together to take care of their kids."
Gordon's live-in boyfriend, Christopher Lloyd, 22, said life must go on.
"Well, it's the child's birthday," he said. "As sad as it is, this is a celebration of birth. That's death. They go hand in hand. It happens, so embrace both. The little girl? She's going to heaven."
"I want (the family) to be happy and know she's in a better place," he added.
Saturday evening, police still did not know why Kevin Wolfe gave the boy his keys.
"That will be the $64,000 question," said Largo police Sgt. Kelly Goswick. "It really would. I can't even begin to guess what he was thinking."
[Last modified May 22, 2004, 22:22:07]
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